Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
DECLAN
I should not have come. I knew I shouldn't have, and I came anyway. Now she's walking toward the car in those jeans, with her hair loose like that and her eyes lighting up when she sees me, and I haven't the first idea what I thought I’d be able to manage here.
Mine, some treacherous part of me thinks as she walks toward the car. I get out and open the door for her, which makes her smile almost bashfully. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” She won’t open her own damn door, not when I’m here.
Then we're off, like two thieves into the night, away from the criticism and judgment of anyone who'd give us a hard time about any of it.
“I'm so nervous,” she says, and I'm surprised at how steadily she's talking after five drinks. But at least I know now—if she's had five drinks, this isn't going anywhere. With that many drinks, consent lines blur, and she has to consent.
So if I've taken her out drunk, this is only ever going to be a conversation. A fun night. A safeguard for me not doing exactly what I want to do to her.
One stolen evening in a stretch of thousands of other evenings, none of which I'll be able to steal quite like this one. Just us. Just the two of us, the way it should be.
“Surprised at how well you've held your liquor,” I say, giving her a sidelong glance. “Five drinks, and you’re acting sober as a monk.”
“My liquor?” she says, with that curious little shrug of hers. “I haven't been drinking, Declan.”
Oh fuck.
“What do you mean?” I say, my pulse jumping.
“Probably enough sugar and caffeine to keep me going till Sunday, but no alcohol.”
No. The one thing keeping me from the edge—gone. Just like that.
Christ.
Bridget leans back in the seat, tipping her head against the headrest, and looks at me in that way she does that cuts right through me.
“Why is it always like this with us?”
“Like what?” I ask her, and then I can't help it. I'm reaching over, my fingers threading through hers, holding her hand, and it feels right. Natural. Stolen. Like something I was never supposed to have, but something I’ve been taking anyway, one small piece at a time.
“Normal,” she says. “Uncomplicated. Like—”
She tilts her head and doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to because I know exactly what she means. And some part of me, there under the gilt edge of a full moon over Dublin, understands that I have been doing this wrong for a very long time.
Does she feel the same?
“Because we're friends,” she murmurs, answering a question I didn't ask. Her thumb traces the side of my hand.
“Friends.”
She hits the radio station and starts streaming some shite pop that hurts my ears.
“No,” I say, turning it back.
“It's my car ride.”
“It's my car.”
She changes it back. I change it again. She makes a sound of pure indignation and changes it back again.
“This is not music,” I tell her.
“This is excellent music. You have the taste of a man twice your age.”
“Well, I’m older than you.”
She snorts. “What does that have to do with anything?”
We go three more rounds. She lands on something neither of us hates and leaves her hand resting on the dial.
“Touch it,” she says pleasantly, “and I'll throw your charger cord out the window.”
“And I’ll pull over, find it, and make you wish you hadn’t.”
But I don't touch it.
“What happens next, Declan?” she says after a time. Her voice is quiet. Careful. “You came back from America. And I know you can't tell me everything—but whatever you found there, can it affect anything that happens here?”
I clear my throat and decide right then, I’m giving her the truth… as much as I can.
“Our family is in jeopardy. Our safety. So what happens next,” I say carefully, “is that my cousin arranges for me to marry someone to secure our allegiances and fortify us for what’s coming.”
She goes very, very still. I feel the exact moment when she decides not to react, like I’m wedded to the small internal click of her decision. I feel the way her fingers go still before she slides her hand out from under mine.
“Who?” she asks. Just the one word, but it's loaded.
“Don't know yet.” I say it as steadily as I can.
“When?”
“Don't know that either. But after what I found out in Boston, I'm afraid it might be sooner rather than later.”
She doesn't say anything. Neither do I. We both leave the obvious thing unspoken: It won't be her.
It can't be. She has nothing to offer that Seamus McCarthy would say yes to.
He's not in the business of mending hearts—he's in the business of mending lives.
And lives, in our world, are measured in alliances.
“So we’re on borrowed time,” she says after a moment. “As… as friends. Your wife won’t want to share you.”
I don’t answer. She’s not wrong.
“I have a question for you.” She's tapping her knee nervously. Her nails are long, painted white, with little sparkles on them. They're entirely, ridiculously her.
“What's that?” I ask.
“It's more of a confession, actually.”
“Go on, then.”
“I was lying,” she says. “When I said I didn't remember the kiss.”
The car purrs.
“I want you to kiss me again,” she says. “Before they seal your fate with whoever the hell they choose. Before everything changes. I just—I want that. One more time. Just once. Is that wrong?”
So I act before logic talks me out of it.
I pull the car over onto a vacant street and cut the engine. She's gone soft and thoughtful beside me, looking at her hands. Then she looks up at me—and that's it. That's all it takes.
I unbuckle her seat belt, then mine. I reach for her, and she comes, easy and right, settling into my lap like she was built for it, like this is the most natural thing, which it is. Which it has always been.
I take my time. I breathe her in. I don’t want to ever, ever forget this.
“Christ,” I groan. “What are you wearing?”
“Perfume,” she says with that little smile. “Supposed to make men wild.”
“Worth every fucking penny, but if you wear that around any other goddamn man…” Then I kiss her.
Slow. Unhurried. Like I have all the time in the world, even though I don't—as if this moment is the only one that exists, even though it isn't. Every argument I've ever made against Bridget Kavanagh dissolves.
There's only her, warm and real in my arms, and she fits so perfectly it's almost unbearable.
I slide one hand to the back of her neck, the other framing her face, tilting her chin up and holding her the way she lets me. Then I kiss her until the city outside the windows might as well not exist.
“I missed you,” I whisper against her ear. “I want you, Bridget.”
“Me too,” she whispers. Her voice is steady, but her hands aren't. “I want you. Not only did I never forget the club—I've never been back there. And I've never been with anyone else, Declan. Not properly. Not the way—”
She stops herself. I feel the shape of the rest of it anyway, and it hits me somewhere I don't have a name for. All this time—she’s been keeping this for me without either of us admitting that's what she was doing.
“If you're going to marry somebody else,” she says, “and there can't be anything between us after that… we need tonight, Declan. Just tonight.”
I don't care if Cavin kills me for this, or Seamus. I'm not engaged yet. She's sober, she's willing, and she's mine, whatever I'm allowed to call that or not.
“Aye,” I murmur against her hair. “We can, can’t we?”
She's trembling slightly. I pull back to look at her.
“Are you scared?”
“Maybe a little,” she admits. Then, softer, “No.”
“Don't be. Come on—let's get some snacks first. You must be knackered.”
“Actually,” she says, brightening in that way she does, the way that makes the whole car feel warmer, “do you know they opened a little chipper right here in town?”
“Have they?”
“And there's a new place doing cookies—enormous ones, big as saucers, like the American-style ones.”
I groan. “Do they do chocolate chip?” I can hear the smile in my own voice. “I've gotten rather fond of a good chocolate chip cookie, living in America.”
“Well,” she says, “I suppose we'd better find out.”
She checks her phone quickly, then tucks it away. “Just making sure Erin’s not after me yet. I texted her that I needed a little time to myself. Now that Erin's pregnant, she's gone pure mammy on all of us, and Cavin's even worse.”
“Cavin loves you,” I say.
“If you mention that one more time, Declan McCarthy, I swear to Christ—”
I catch her hair and tug, just like I did that first night in the club, the way that makes her cheeks flush and her breath catch.
She goes mock-outraged, then laughs, and I pull her close and kiss her again and again until she's warm and loose against me.
The world around us fades, and the only word I hear in my head is mine.
“Bridget.” I put a world of warning in my voice. She’s breathing heavily, damn near grinding against me.
She knows exactly what she's doing.
“Stop,” I tell her with a groan.
She shakes her head, slow and deliberate. “No. I really shouldn’t have read my horoscope today.”
“Why not?”
“It said I was going to have a chance to say yes and that yes would have a major positive impact on my life, but we both know that it… that it can’t.”
“Bridget—”
“I've watched everyone else build their lives around me, Declan.” Her voice is soft, but there's iron in it. “I’ll at least have this night with you.”
“Givin’ me sass again?” I murmur, because she loves when I get bossy, and I’d do anything to see her eyes go half lidded and her pupils blown wide.
She tilts her head. There's a smile playing at the corner of her mouth she's trying very hard to suppress.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“That does it.” Against every shred of logic and reason I have left, I lift her and lay her across my lap in the car.
She's laughing before it even starts, her legs kicking, hand flying out to catch herself against the seat.
I pin her expertly with one palm flat at the small of her back, holding her still, then my other hand comes down across the curve of her arse.
The crack of it fills the car. Even through the denim, it lands heavy, and she squeals, trying to wriggle free, her hips twisting against my thighs.
And I’m instantly hard.
I bring my hand down again and again, steady and deliberate, because I know she likes it, and I know she wants it, and fuck, so do it.
I spank her until she's squirming and cursing under her breath, grinding against my lap in a way she almost certainly isn't conscious of, and I am hard as I've ever been in my life.
“Now,” I say, leaning down to speak against her ear, gathering a fistful of her hair at the nape and pulling, gentle but sure. “Want to try again?”
She moans, then catches herself. “Oh my god—stop—”
“Funny,” I say, my fingers tangled in her hair. “You were the one who started this.”
“Don't pull my hair.” She's breathing hard. She hasn't stopped moving against me. “Declan. Don't.”
I release her hair, resting my hand on her lower back instead, warm and still, and feel her chest heave.
We've crossed every line of propriety between us, and we both know it. I've known it since she climbed into this car. Since the club, if I'm being honest with myself, which I'm trying very hard not to be.
I say it anyway, more to myself than to her.
“If I put my hand between your thighs right now,” I ask, breathing heavily. “Would I find you wet?”
She doesn't answer. Doesn't have to. She's still across my lap, her breathing ragged, and I want things I haven't let myself want in a very long time.
She knows it. I know she does.
I ease my hand from her arm, slow and deliberate. I want this woman. I want her in the most intimate way possible. I want to bury myself inside her until she forgets her own name. I want to ruin her for every other man.
And it would be so fucking wrong, but—
“Declan.” Her voice is barely above a strangled whisper.
My hand hovers just above the curve of her arse, close enough to feel the warmth still radiating from where I spanked her.
She sighs and blinks hard, as if trying to fight back tears.
I push my seat back, then turn her around. She buries her face against my chest, and I hold her. I don't say anything clever because there's nothing clever to say.
“We shouldn't even be alone together,” she says, dragging the back of her hand across her eyes.
“It's okay.”
She lets out a long, shaky breath. “I just—I miss you. Having you back feels like the worst kind of torture, Declan. You're everywhere, and I can't—”
“I know.” The words cost me something. “I know. Because it’s wrecking me too.”
“I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm such a mess.”
“Don't you ever apologize for fuckin’ feeling.” My hand moves in slow circles across her back.
She lets out a laugh that's a half sob, then buries her face against me again, with a deep sigh I feel in my own heart.
I hold her and don't let go. Outside, the city goes on without us, and somewhere on the other side of it, there's a life I agreed to live that has nothing to do with this car, this woman, or the way I can’t make myself put any distance between us.
I don’t let go. I can’t.
“One night,” I whisper in her ear. “Give me one night.”